I've wanted to dive in the Great Barrier Reef since I heard of it for the first time, imagine to swim around with all the fish and just feel free. To me that sounds like a wonderful thing to do, even though I'm terrified of deep water, drowning and unknown stuff. After diving for three days in the Great Barrier Reef, I'm not afraid of any of that anymore. That is the positive thing about challenging your fears, you realise that there's no reason to be scared. 

 

The padi diving course started with two days of theory and pool practice. We got to learn how to set up our gear, how to brake it down, how to dive safely and some useful skills underwater. One of the things I was really nervous about was filling my mask with water and then empty it underwater. I panic as soon as I get something near my eyes and I have never been able to look under water, but I'm so good at it now, it wasn't scary or uncomfortable at all once I learned how to do it. Another thing that I was nervous about was diving deep, since I'm terrified of deep water I really didn't want to go deep, the four meters in the pool felt deep enough. But after getting used to the fact that I could breath under water and that, if something were to happen to the gear, I knew exactly what to do, it felt really amazing to go deeper. In fact, I would love to get my advanced so I can dive up to 30 meters.

 

Once we got out on the water everything started to feel both more exciting but I also felt really nervous, because it was time to actually dive, in the ocean, with fish around and it could be up to 18 meters (of course there's deeper parts than that, but I'm not certified to dive deeper than 18 meters). The first 4 dives where guided with practice, we had to show that we could do all the skills we did in the pool, but now in the ocean. After showing that we could find neutral bouyanc, clear our masks, navigate, ascend without air or shared air and some other useful stuff, we got our certificates.

 

Diving by myself, with my dive buddy, was amazing. I feel so free under water, everything is quiet and you're weightless. On top of that you get to see an amazing new world. The best dive I did was the last one, even though they were all great, because we saw so many cool creatures. We didn't go very deep and most of the time we were just a few meters under the surface, but it was so amazing! We saw a reef shark, a turtle, a clownfish (I found Nemo!!! Two times actually..) and a lot of different corals and fish. 

 

Living on the boat was really awesome, all the divers and snorkelers were so nice and the staff were truly amazing. Lucas, the cook, was probably the most popular person on the boat since the food was amazing. The instructors Rafael (or Rafi, my instructor), Shawn (a cool Aussie) and Juni (the ninja, or the Japanese instructor) were really wonderful, they had a lot of humour and they were just really fun and nice to be around.

 

The last night we did a guided night dive, which was really cool, and when we came back up on the boat we went on the top deck to watch the fish and sharks swimming around the boat and the stars.. So many stars. The stars out at sea are so beautiful, since it is so dark you can see so many of them and they shine so bright. 

 

To end a great trip we went out together, when we got back to Cairns, which was sweet as. Unfortunately, my joints started hurting really bad after a few hours so the night ended quite early for me, but it was still an awesome night.